Always
by rps-lizardspock
Summary: Bones has bad news to deliver to Winona. There's an obvious main-character death, guys.


You take a deep breath as you stare at the door. You had a long time to prepare for this, but now that you're here, out in the middle of Nowhere, Iowa with the snow fluttering around you and the cold wind biting into your skin, you can't help but wish you were anywhere else right now.

You knew it would be you to bring this news. Others had offered, but he was your best friend, your lover, your everything, this was your responsibility. It broke your heart the day he was brought back to the ship and you couldn't save him. His pain-filled, sad, but loving blue eyes shining at you, him telling you he loved you and that everything would be alright and your heart just broke, because how could a universe without him in it ever be alright?

You take another breath and the coldness burns your lungs and the pain momentarily distracts your from your heartache as you watch as your hand reaches up almost involuntarily and knocks on the door. There's a long moment where you think that maybe she isn't home, that you'd be able to put this off for longer, but then the door opens and she's standing there. You've never met her before, but you've heard all about her and your breath catches because this is it. She smiles at you and she's got the same blue eyes as him, and her long blonde hair flows past her shoulders and for all the pictures you've seen of his father and how alike they look, it's easy to see how much of his beauty came from her.

"Can I help you?" She asks, still smiling.

"Ma'am," you start and your voice sounds foreign to you. "Um, Mrs. Kirk. I'm, uh, my name is Leonard McCoy." You watch as realization flashes across her face and you know she knows who you are, but that doesn't surprise you. Why wouldn't he have told her who you are? You look at the woman who was the mother of the man you loved.

"So your Jimmy's Bones, huh?" She says, smiling warmly. She opens the door wide. "Why don't you come in out of the cold?" She steps aside and you nod graciously, walking in behind her.

"Thank you," you say and gently knock the snow out of your hair.

"Not a problem," she says. "Any friend of Jimmy's is welcome here, though from what I gather you and he are a little more than friends."

"Yes ma'am," you answer because you can't seem to make your brain come up with anything more to say.

"So what brings you all the way out here? Last I heard from Jim you all were lightyears away."

"I actually came here because... I um, I have bad news." A tear falls down your face as you begin to tell her the tale. About how he died saving several members of his crew, how you did everything you could, but that he was gone, that you couldn't save him. You didn't notice, but sometime during the time you were speaking she sat down on the couch and when your words finally fade away you look up to her and you wish you could bolt from the room because she looks so lost with tears streaming down her cheeks and you don't know how to handle her grief on top of yours.

"When Jimmy was younger," she starts saying and your focus is completely on her. "He was something of a problem child. I was away quite a bit and he rebelled against his step-father. By time I left Starfleet he was already getting into trouble all the time. His step-father and I didn't know what to do with him. We tried, Lord knows we tried, but we didn't know how to get through to him. He left home when he was 17 and I was always so afraid that he'd... He would call, all the time, just to let me know he was alright, but then he was getting in trouble with the law and getting into fights all the time. I didn't think he'd make it to 25, honestly. But then I got the call from him saying that he'd met Chris Pike and he'd convinced him to join Starfleet and I was scared because of what happened to George, but this was something he really wanted, a goal that he'd chosen and I was thrilled that he finally had some direction in his life."

"That was the day I met him," you interject when she pauses. "When he joined Starfleet. I had just gotten divorced by a woman who broke my heart and took everything I owned and there was this kid, bloodied and bruised and lookin' just about as messed up as I felt..."

"He told me that you, above everything, including his desire to achieve everything he wanted to in Starfleet, that you were the thing that saved him. That he would have been lost without you."

"I'm pretty sure he saved me too, ma'am," you say and another tear falls.

"I was so proud of him when he made captain," she says.

"He was such an idiot. Nearly died three times that day. I swear half the gray hairs on my head are a direct result of that day," you laugh sadly. "I was proud of him, too."

"He loved you," she says suddenly. "He never told me directly, hell, he never told me directly that you were together, but a mother knows these things and he loved you."

"I know he did."

"Did you love him?"

"I did," you say. "I do," you correct yourself. He was the one person in your life that you could count on through anything, that would always be there for you and you would always do the same for him. Besides your daughter, he was the only person in the universe that you loved unconditionally. Your heart breaks some more when she smiles sadly at you. "I always will."


End file.
